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Sun sets on Virginia Capitol in Richmond, Va., Nov. 3, 2023. All 140 seats in the General Assembly are on the ballot this year. Photo by Jimmy Clutier
Virginia’s high-stakes General Assembly elections on Nov. 7 are the commonwealth’s most expensive on record — and could prove to be among the costliest legislative elections in U.S. history.
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“Dark money” organizations have spent more than $1.7 million on Virginia candidates. More than $1.4 Million going to Republican candidates. Photo by Jimmy Cloutier // VCIJ
Independent political groups backed largely by “dark money” organizations and wealthy donors have spent nearly $1.7 million on Virginia candidates this election cycle, raising concerns about transparency and the influence of outside money in the tightly contested battle for control of the General Assembly.
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The sign outside of the Richmond Registrar's Office, Richmond, Virginia, on Aug. 1, 2023. The city electoral board voted on July 25 to limit in-person early voting to this location in northern Richmond, near the city limit. Photo by Jimmy Cloutier
The Richmond Electoral Board’s decision last week to limit early voting locations could force voters in majority Black precincts to travel more than two hours by public transit to cast their ballots ahead of election day, an analysis by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO has found.
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Virginia legislative candidates across Greater Richmond and Hampton Roads raised nearly $3.8 million in the last three weeks of June — mostly from big donors giving more than $10,000 to their campaigns.
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Dominion Energy headquarters, as seen in Richmond, Va., on June 22, 2023. (Jimmy Cloutier/OpenSecrets)
The overwhelming share of campaign funding in the low-turnout, yet expensive, primaries in Greater Richmond and the Hampton Roads came from political organizations, business interests and corporate-aligned political action committees, according to an OpenSecrets analysis of campaign finance reports. Most candidates who raised big-donor money won.
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Sen. Louise Lucas is photographed with members of the Moms Demand Action booth at Pride in the ‘Peake in Chesapeake, Va., on Sunday, June 11, 2023. Photo by Kristen Zeis
It’s been decades since two Hampton Roads Democratic state senators, Louise Lucas and Lionell Spruill, were out of the public eye.
Lucas launched her political career in Virginia by winning a Portsmouth City Council seat in 1984. Spruill, a Chesapeake native, first won a seat in the Virginia General Assembly in 1994.
Both legislative stalwarts rose from poor backgrounds to become ambitious, long-standing powerbrokers in southeastern Virginia. On June 20, one will be out of a job.
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Empty coal cars sit on the tracks outside of Grundy, Virginia. Photo by Mason Adams
Southwest Virginia once voted reliably Democratic, and its transition to clean-sweep Republican within a generation demonstrates the partisan realignment that Trump accelerated, and which the 2020 election looks set to entrench for another generation.
Read moreIn 2016, the only age group to see an increase in the percentage of voters was youth aged 18-29. Still, this group lagged far behind all other age groups. Only 46.1% of eligible voters in this age demographic voted according to the US Census Bureau.
VCIJ asked a dozen first-time voters in a presidential election to share what is motivating them to vote in Virginia during this election cycle. They also share what issues they care about, how they get their information and why they feel voting is important.
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